Wingprints
by Fyretress
Summary: (Destiel) Castiel sustained a fatal injury and leaves Dean with a permident reminder of his angel.


"No," Dean choked, gathering the twitching Castiel into his arms. Around them lay the bodies of fourteen angels, the mark of their death singed into the ground around them like grotesque works of art. Sam lay unconscious and propped up against a wall a few feet away, his breathing steady and slow as a deep bruise blossomed over his forehead. Dean's little brother would be fine.

But Castiel would not.

He was panting and groaning in the hunter's arms, blood slowly leaking out from a stab wound near his heart. The angels had jumped them all at once, and it had been too much to handle. Somewhere in the process, Cas had been fatally injured by an angel sword, the blade barely missing his heart. And by the sheen of sweat covering the normally pain indifferent angel, it was obvious that he would not recover this time.

"No," the Winchester gasped again, barely managing to force the word passed the lump in his throat. He placed a palm on Castiel's cheek, rubbing his thumb gently over the angel's cheekbone.

"D-dean," Cas gurgled, a dribble of blood running out of the side of his mouth to accompany the word.

"You're gonna be fine, Cas," Dean assured, but his cracking voice said otherwise. "You're gonna be fine." The angel managed to flash a practically nonexistent grin before his facial muscles contorted in pain again, his breath hitching.

"No, you're not giving up on me now, buddy," the hunter demanded firmly, tears shimmering the edges of his vision. "Don't die on me now."

"I'm afraid I-" the other's words were interrupted by a violent coughing fit that sprayed droplets blood out into the air in front of him. "I'm afraid I don't have a choice," he finished weakly, brows furrowing as he concentrated on forming the words. Cas' face was paling rapidly as more and more blood spilled out of his chest and stained his usually impeccably white dress shirt scarlet.

"There's always a choice," Dean chuckled nervously, but there was no hint of amusement in his words. "Team Free Will, right?" Cas shook his head as another coughing fit shook his body.

"Not this time, Dean." The angel whimpered pathetically before biting his lip and rolled his head back in agony.

"Please, Cas," Dean begged, his vocal cords throbbing from the strain of his anguish. This was Cas, _Castiel_, angel of the lord. And here he was, dying in Dean's arms as the hunter helplessly tried to comfort him.

"There is s-something v…very important," Castiel said weakly, meeting Dean's green gaze with his own intense blue one.

"Anything," the hunter said, trying to not to think that this was his friend's last wish.

"Keep fighting." The words came out from between clenched, bloodied teeth as Cas clamped his jaw down, muscles in his sharp jaw line flexing noticeably.

"Cas-"

"No, Dean. You are a g-g-good man and you save people," the angel said sharply, each word followed by a jagged inhale of breath. Another smirk flashed across the angel's lips as he reached up to rest a hand on the hunter's cheek, mirroring the position Dean's hand was in. "You saved _me_."

The Winchester felt his chin tremble and he pulled the angel closer. Cas' body was ice cold, as if he was dead already, and Castiel welcomed the rush of warmth with relief. He could feel Dean's heartbeat as it pulsed through his warm flesh as his own start to slow. His nose was filled with the pleasing aroma of Dean- a combination of whisky, sweat, leather, and the hunter's shampoo. It was a scent that the angel had come to associate with pleasant things and he was happy that it would the last fragrance he inhaled.

"You taught me to be independent, and I am forever grateful for that. D-don't…don't stop helping people, Dean, p-p-promise m…me." Dean nodded vigorously.

"Of course, Cas."

"Take c-care of Sa….Sam," Castiel panted, and he reached up to grip the Winchester's wrist. The angel was very near to death now; Dean saw the same darkness in his eyes he had seen a thousand times before as he watched Death take someone right from under his grasp. But it was different this time, this time it was Cas. His stomach felt like it was a black hole, sucking up everything inside him but pain and sorrow.

"I will," Dean soothed, wrapping his arm tighter around the other.

"Dean…!" Cas cried, his eyes fixated on a certain point behind Dean's shoulder. The man turned, but saw nothing.

"M-my reaper," Castiel breathed, flicking his intense gaze back to the man's. "H-he's here."

"Angels have reapers?" Dean asked, his voice soft and comforting as he stroked Cas' face, mostly just trying to distract the being in his arms from the pain. His voice had an undertone of grief, but he tried to hide it for the other's sake. The angel squirmed in pain and closed his eyes to the sight of the creature that had come to take him away.

"Will you go to heaven?" the hunter asked, lifting the limp body in his arms up closer to his face. Castiel's eyes flickered open at the movement, surprise dancing with pain as he realized how close to Dean's face he was.

"I-I…I don't know," he rasped out, another trickle of blood seeping from his mouth. "I don't know where ang-..angels go when they…w-when we…" Cas squeezed his eyes shut against the hurt again, a drop of red leaking from his left nostril now, too. Dean pressed his forehead against the angel's and touched their noses together. He waited until Castiel's eyes opened again to speak.

"I'm sure you will," he said in a tone so rich with emotion that it made Cas' grace sing with joy, banishing the fear and agony that were etched into the lines of his face. Dean leaned forward and gently- oh so gently- pressed his lips to Cas', tipping the angel's head up to meet his with a strong, firm hand. He tasted like blood and something else, something unearthly that Dean couldn't quite put his finger on. When they parted, Castiel's breathing was slow and steady, as if the single kiss had erased all the pain that racked his body.

"I love you, Cas," Dean breathed, keeping their foreheads touching. Castiel's hand rose from the man's wrist to his shoulder, long fingers folding around the hand-print shaped scar that raised the skin there.

"I love you to, Dean" the angel replied so softly that the hunter would have missed it were he not to close to his face. And then Castiel's let out a sigh that sounded almost content, and his chest didn't rise again. His hands fell from their positions off Dean's shoulder and face, one arm folding across his chest and the other splaying out across the cracked asphalt of the alley.

"Cas?" Dean shook the being in his arms gently, but those sky blue eyes stared glassily up, not moving. There was a light missing in those deep depths of black, a light that the Winchester had never really noticed until it was gone.

"Cas?!" This shake was more urgent as the man's voice cracked with the name, but the Castiel's limbs just flopped weakly and his head rolled back. When Dean blinked, and a single tear rolled down his cheek and dripped onto the angel's ice cold face.

...

Two days later, they had the funeral. Dean didn't feel it was right to just burn Cas' body like any normal person, the being inside had been much too powerful for that. Sam didn't argue with his brother, he just let him go about making preparations. Dean reacted differently than Sam to tragedies, he kept busy while Sam tended to marinate in his sorrow.

Of course, the younger Winchester knew how much the angel had meant to Dean far before the man had realized it himself. When he had come to in that alley, the first thing he laid eyes on was his older brother rocking Castiel's cold, stiff body in his arms, making small sounds in the back of his throat that were filled with so much sorrow that they could break ten hearts with every one.

Dean had cleaned the blood out of the angel's clothes again and again and again, until his fingers were raw and they were out of soap and warm water. He refused to buy a new shirt; instead stitching up the one Cas had always worn with fumbling, awkward fingers. But he imagined that Cas wouldn't mind. He would accept the favor with a smile and gratefulness as he always did whenever the man did something for him.

How had Dean not seen it, not _realized_? It was so obvious now that it was out there, now that he had said it. Instead, he had wasted his time with meaningless flings and had given the angel only glances from the corner of his eye. So much time wasted. And now it would never come back.

It was a Thursday night when they paid their last respects to Castiel, angel of the lord. He was dressed in the clothes he always wore, the comical suit and trench coat, hair just as tousled as it had always been. Dean half expected him to open his startlingly blue eyes and sit up, a puzzled look on his face as he asked what happened.

But he didn't.

And he wouldn't.

They laid him on a small, wooden raft that Dean had crafted with his own hands. There were gashes and cuts all over the man's flesh where he had accidentally injured himself while completing the task, to preoccupied with his own grief to realize what he was doing. Castiel was surrounded by small, dainty blue flowers Sam had found on their hike through the woods. Dean didn't know what species they were, but he was sure that the angel would have found them beautiful and marveled at the small miracle.

_Look at these, Dean_, he would have said, his eyes wide with awe and the faintest hint of a smile stretching across his lips. _If it hadn't been for a single mutation three hundred years ago, they wouldn't exist_. He would have launched into a very scientific explanation that the hunter would never understand, but would chuckle at instead. Then they would have continued on their way, Castiel twirling the flower between his slender fingers and pondering all the small things in life.

Sam laid a white sheet over the angel and the flowers, covering his stone-still face with the white fabric. Dean watched stoically as his younger brother drizzled the whole raft with gasoline and tossed a match onto it. It went up in flames six feet high, crackling as if they were laughing at Dean's misery. The younger Winchester pushed the raft off the dock with one foot, and the pair stood there and watched as the flaming mass drifted farther and farther into the lake.

"We had to," Sam said softly, laying a soft hand on his brother's shoulder. "Demons, they could-"

"I know," Dean interrupted, speaking for the first time since Castiel's death. The taller man let the words die in his mouth, but kept his hand reassuringly on his brother's shoulder. Dean felt his brother tremble with silent tears, but he himself did not shed a single one. Instead, the depression flooded and sloshed around inside him like a roiling, heeaving ocean. There was too much of it to transform into tears.

They watched until the raft had burned to nothing and the sun was peeking up over the horizon.

...

It was four days after Castiel's passing that Dean discovered the mark that the angel had left behind on the hunter. And only because Sam finally convinced him to strip out of his bloody, sweat soaked clothing and shower. When Dean shrugged off his leather coat, he saw them. The man tore off his shirt as well and stared at his naked chest in the mirror.

There, burned into his skin in a tone as black as night, were Castiel's wing impressions. The Winchester turned slowly, eyes drinking in the complex pattern of small and large feathers, the gentle sloping lines of the wings as if one had been draped across his back and the other had been wrapped around the front of his chest. The longer feathers, the flight feathers, spanned the length of the Winchester's arm, tapering off to an end at his wrist. Dean stared and stared until the mirror fogged up from a forgotten shower before he finally started to clean himself, washing the sweat and blood from his flesh.

Cas' wings did not fade.

...

Dean remembered Castiel for every single day of his life, the memory of the lost love haunting the back of his mind every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Sometimes, when he was alone, we would strip off his shirt and run his fingers over Cas' wings, fingers tracing the black lines of feathers and palm coming to a rest over the angel's handprint. And then he would get drunk. He would scream and shout and break things before blacking out into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

And when he woke up, it would be with a pillow soaked with salt water and throat swelled from crying.

But Dean never stopped hunting. How else would he live his life? He distracted himself by killing every evil son of a bitch he came across, imagining they were all responsible for Cas' death. It was what he did.

He saved people.

Hunted things.

Sammy managed to wriggle out of the life and settle down with a woman named Gabriella. White picket fence and all. And Dean adored his niece and nephew. Little Joanna and Robert Winchester.

And when Dean grew old and couldn't hunt anymore, he moved in with his brother and sister-in-law. Bobby and Jo were off to college by then, and Gabriella still worked as a nurse. Sam and Dean would spend the day together, sitting and drinking beer and talking about the good old days.

But Dean got sick.

Doctors said it was a heart condition, that he would only last another month. His niece and nephew came home to be with their beloved uncle. Dean hated it, being stuck in bed. Not being able to do _anything_.

Though he didn't mind the daily pie.

It was clear Tuesday night when she came, just like when Castiel had been taken. The old hunter sensed her before he saw her, and tilted his towards her when she moved.

"Long time, no see, Tessa," he croaked, the steady chirping of the monitor in the background. She regarded him with what could only be described as pity, her head cocked to one side as she looked upon the dying man.

Sam awoke with a snort, sitting bolt upright in the chair he was in. When he saw Tessa, his shoulders slumped. The reaper nodded at the younger brother, and he returned the greeting.

"Ready to go, Dean?" she asked softly, holding out her hand. He held up a palm towards Tessa, silently asking for a few more minutes. To his surprise, she nodded and took a step backwards.

"Bury me with a beer, huh?" Dean instructed his little brother, his voice cracking. Sam nodded and his forehead twitched, a sign he was about to cry.

"Aw, come here, you big baby." The younger Winchester stood and walked over to the hospital bed, engulfing the older man in a tight hug. When they broke the embrace, Sam stayed by his brother's side with a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Dean, it's your time," Tessa said softly, holding out her hand again.

"I just have one question," Dean insisted, and the reaper considered for a few moments before nodding him on.

"Is Cas up there?" A grin spread over Tessa's face as she shook her head in disbelief.

"You know I can't answer questions like that, Dean," she scolded, but shot him a wink that made Dean's heart soar. "You'll just have to come with me and see."

"Take care, little brother," the old hunter directed at Sam, reaching out to take his reaper's hand. And then the monitor flat-lined.

Dean Winchester died with a smile on his lips and one hand wrapped around a raised handprint scar on his shoulder.

...

_Hey assbuts! Thanks for reading my fanfic(: I was in an unusually dark mood today, usually my stories are much lighter and happier and fluffier and...pornier. This was my first ever published writing, so don't forget to leave a review! _

_-And yes, I do know that mortals can't see reapers unless they are their own. I just thought it would be a nice touch for Sam to be able to see Tessa._


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